A blog devoted mainly to questions of authenticity in popular music, frequently featuring MP3's of uncommon--and uncommonly good--songs. Hosted by Yuval Taylor and Hugh Barker, authors of Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music (Norton, 2007).

February 06, 2007

Earnest Punk

I've been thinking about the
quality of earnestness in UK punk music. In our book, we talk about the
ways in which even the first wave of punk
musicians adopted personas that allowed them to project an earnest
anger or
disgust with the world. At this stage, there was little public evidence
of conscious
irony in the most prominent punk bands. For The Sex Pistols and The
Clash, and
for their fans, it was important that the anger and disgust be seen to
be
“authentic” rather than a kind of knowing posture. There were always
more
comedic or self-conscious elements within the loose punk movement - one
could
cite the shambolic entertainments of The Damned for a contrasting
attitude. But
many of the most “serious punks” looked down on The Damned as a joke
band, and
for the most part it was taken as gospel that bands should at least
strive to
be authentic, which involved them projecting a serious and earnest
attitude.

But this was a very difficult
posture to maintain 24/7. As soon as the musicians became well-known
and had to continue creating music, the pressure of
keeping up an earnest front began to show. The Pistols disintegrated
before
this became obvious, leaving John Lydon with the long-term problem of
having to
prove his personal authenticity over and over again. The Clash had to
gradually
modify their approach over time to adapt to commercial pressures and
cultural
changes.

But the progress to a more
ironic, knowing posture was more apparent in some of the other bands
who followed in the wake of early punk. A few examples
from the period:

Alternative TV’s “How Much Longer” mocks the various tribes of the late 1970s UK, moving on to the “punks” before
concluding that all of them “don’t know nothing, and don’t really care.” The extremely
funny lyrics describe punks as endlessly talking about “anarchy, fascism and
boredom.” This is already a long way from the earnestness that many expected
from punk. Alternative TV’s Mark Perry was an anomaly in the early punk
movement. His Sniffin’ Glue fanzine
was always prepared to criticize the tendency for punks to conform to a new
fashion code, and he expressed disdain for the “sell-out” of those bands like
the Clash who had signed to major labels. Partly as a result, he was a strong
advocate of the DIY approach, and more experimental ideas. But the ideal of a
thousand cheap records made in separate front rooms also meant an
acknowledgment that the punk “movement” was a collection of very disparate
voices, some serious and earnest, some more anarchic and humorous. The slightly
arch punk poetry of Attila the Stockbroker and John Cooper Clarke came from a
similarly oblique take on the punk attitude.

The Fall weren’t punks as such, although it is hard to imagine their
brutal art-noise approach having had the same level of attention without punk
having retrained people’s ears to hear “noise” a bit differently. But their
early radio and TV exposure came from material like “Industrial Estate,” which gleefully takes the basic sound of punk
and twists it into something more sarcastic, twisted and weird. Punks often
sang about the bleak boredom of suburban towns. “Industrial Estate” taken in
isolation could almost be taken to be an extension of this kind of earnest,
gritty realism, but this kind of song was merely a launch pad for Mark E. Smith
to move on to weirder material like “Bingomaster’s Breakout” or “Psychick
Dancehall” in which the textures of urban 1970s Britain become the background
to a more self-consciously artistic reinterpretation.

Wire’s “12XU” sounds like a
straight-up punk song on first hearing, but there is something a bit more
clever and self-conscious about it. It is no surprise that they went on from
this to a more self-consciously arty approach which prefigured “post-punk.”
This represents a far more knowing version of punk, where the band and audience
could conspire to use punk in new ways.

“Jilted John” by Jilted John
wasn’t really a punk song at all, but a parody of a punk song. Over a
deliberately stupid guitar riff, “Jilted John” whined about how difficult his
life was because his girlfriend had left him for Gordon the moron. The song was
a hit in the UK, reflecting the fact that punk’s earnestness had come to be seen as something
slightly ludicrous, and also perhaps the fact that buyers were just as happy to
buy this comic take on punk as they were to buy “real punk.”

All of these examples go in
slightly different directions from the original wave of punk. What they
all share is the fact that they are happy to
seen as “knowing postures.” Alternative TV and Jilted John make fun of
the punk
movement from inside and out, effectively puncturing the original
earnestness.
While Wire and The Fall are happy to utilise punk’s basic structure and
sound,
but to be seen to be doing something a bit more “clever” or “ironic”
which is
something that the earliest punk bands could rarely do.

Of course some earnestness persisted. Bands like Crass retained their
earnestness by focussing on politics and remaining resolutely outside of the
mainstream. The Jam retained a fervent following for a few years while keeping
to a rather po-faced manifesto. But Paul Weller clearly felt constrained by
this in the end, and eventually moved on to the far more frothy Style Council
in a clear attempt to redefine himself as a pop musician who could have fun as
well as be serious.

So as punk disintegrated into a variety of new strands and directions, the
initial pose of earnestness became extremely hard to sustain. And these directions
could only be found by setting that earnestness aside or by parodying it.

Comments

While I have no doubt that in order to be taken seriously punk bands had to act pretty earnest, there was always an element of mockery even in the very earliest punk songs. You can certainly see this in the Ramones, from the very beginning, but the Sex Pistols' songs were also full of irony, self-mocking, and knowing winks, and I'm afraid I don't see Alternative TV, the Fall, or Wire as a departure from that posture. All these bands combined earnestness with a sneer. Perhaps the Clash were something of an exception for a year or two, but their cover of "I Fought the Law" is full of self-conscious posturing.

For me, it's a matter of degree, of how clearly the bands felt able to telegraph their posturing. I agree with you about The Ramones, which is why I limited the discussion to UK punk, which took a different path. But for me the early Pistols and Clash could never have made it as clear as those later bands that there was any irony or humour involved - they had to appear earnest and straight-faced even if there was a slight nod and wink involved on a close inspection - whereas the examples quoted here are quite openly undermining that earnestness.

Maybe we disagree only on the Sex Pistols--the Clash were pretty irony-free, but "No Feelings" and "Pretty Vacant" are ironic from beginning to end (and "Holidays in the Sun" and "God Save the Queen" have plenty of irony too). I really can't see the difference between "Pretty Vacant" and "How Much Longer," or between "No Feelings" and "12XU."

What other bands were in the pure earnestsness camp along with the Clash? Certainly Stiff Little Fingers were, but didn't they come later?

The difference for me between Pretty Vacant and How Much Longer is that Pretty Vacant is punk posturing, ironic or not, whereas How Much Longer is taking the piss out of punk posturing.

I guess this was a tension that was there from the start - how openly one could be ironic or knowing about one's posturing. Some of the first wave of bands like the Adverts and the Slits were pretty knowing at times, whereas Joy Division, the Banshees, the Jam, even X-Ray Spex were more po-faced. Then bands that came a bit later like SLF and Crass were some of the most dour of the lot. But as I said, the distinction I intended to make was not about whether bands are being ironic or posturing to some degree, it's more about the degree to which they are prepared to openly acknowledge that pose or irony, to make a joke or artistic point out of the fact that they are posturing.

Maybe I should go back and edit my original post to try to make this distinction more clear, but then these comments wouldn't make so much sense. Ah well...

I always felt it was the media's reaction to early punk that was po-faced, more than the bands themselves. The punk bands always came across as being in on a secret joke, which the media didn't get, one of the reasons I liked it at the time.

And what Hugh is saying about the acknowledging what is really going on or not gets to the point of Fiction/Real-life crossing over. Nothing is explained. No context given. I think that's part of the beauty and mystique of rock'n roll and other similar musics. But in addition I don't think the artists are really "in" on it either.

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